Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech on Thursday in which he claimed the U.S. and its allies are “playing a dangerous, bloody and dirty” world domination game. The Russian leader claims his country’s battle is with “Western elites,” according to The New York Times.
The Russian leader mostly took aim at the U.S. and Europe during his speech at the annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow. He claimed that the world order created by the West following the collapse of the Soviet Union is “coming to an end,” USA Today reported.
“We are standing at a historical frontier,” said the Russian leader, per Reuters. “Ahead is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, important decade since the end of World War Two.”
Putin described “two Wests” in his address. His first description is the Christian West with traditional values. The other is the “aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial” West, which Putin claims is forcing its “strange” values upon the rest of the world.
“The West is no longer able to dictate its will to the humankind but still tries to do it, and the majority of nations no longer want to tolerate it,” Putin said, per The Telegraph.
Putin also said that he stands by his belief that Ukrainians and Russians are a single people. During his address, Putin claimed he has no intention of using nuclear weapons on Ukraine. “There’s no sense for us, neither political nor military,” he said, according to The New York Times.